September 02, 2006

richly deserved

The rumors were flying over the past few days, and yesterday afternoon the glorious truth shone forth: The New Republic has "suspended" critic Lee Siegel. Experts predict a 1000% increase of schadenfreude on the internets this weekend. There's already some commentary out and about, but the art blogosphere's own Kriston Capps seems to have the most detailed account. It makes one a little nostalgic for the days when it was only online art writers who complained about what a fatuous critic Siegel was. Pretty soon, though, his monumental asshattery was known far and wide; now, he is for the ages. Lee, we hardly knew ye--and wish we knew ye less.

The sockpuppetry angle, of course, provides the cherry on top. This cache preserves some of "sprezzatura's" comments. Nasty stuff, but one can only conclude that his TNR colleagues didn't like to read him, either--if they had been paying attention, it would have been painfully obvious that "sprezzatura" was Siegel, as one commentator quickly noted. He even recycles some of his previous criticisms of various online writers. The obvious lesson drawn is that the internets can make some people a little crazy, and it's a good idea to think about what you write online before hitting "post." Siegel isn't even the first TNR blogger to flame out, though his slow-motion self-immolation may be the more spectacular. On a less general level, the episode confirms what a nasty piece of work Siegel is, and how that fact connects his substantive (for lack of a better word) criticism and his online escapades. If specious simplifications marked the typical Siegel review, the same impulse towards reductive caricature shows up in his vicious remarks toward others, whether in the "blogofascism" comedy or his misadventures as "spezzatura." In a comment to this post way back, Kriston put it best:

The problem with Siegel's criticism is that he always goes for the
gimmick . . . [I]t's hard for me to trust his instincts because I
know he always reaches low.

I felt disinclined to comment because I wasn't reading the man's work in the first place. There are writers with whom I will gladly disagreee, and LS wasn't one of them - his writings seemed damp with fundamental confusions about art that would be no pleasure to refute. Ditto with the whole blogofascism debacle - stuff so wrong ought not be put right so much as paraded around to the obvious discredit of the perpetrator. The computer sciences offer a useful corrective: what they call a Clue By Four. Perhaps his firing will be a sufficiently forceful wallop to knock a bit of self-awareness into him, but I only wonder as an intellectual exercise. He's not sufficiently interesting to monitor the outcome.

Well, not too disinclined, obviously! But actually, I largely agree: I stopped reading Siegel quite a while ago--the prospect of some easy pickings for posts wasn't worth dealing with the sheer badness of his work. I couldn't help but read the blogofascism stuff, of course--it was everywhere--and his recent overheated pedophilia accusations against some academic guy also got on my radar, though not to the same degree. His problem was that, with his blog he moved into a much wider pool than arts criticism--hysterical screeds against sites like Daily Kos coming from a TNR writer are going to get noticed. Once Siegel's blood was in that pool of water, his work was "paraded around to the obvious discredit of the perpetrator"--that's why he got fired. He was embarrassing the magazine.

It's also just an interesting story. The guy won a National Magazine Award just a few years ago. That doesn't mean he walks on water, but they don't give them out to just anybody, either. To go from that level of regard to ranting online about people wearing baseball caps to fired because no one wants to be associated with you is a pretty steep fall.

Yeah, I saw he was back with ESPN after his exile, if it can be called that, at nfl.com. I actually like Tuesday Morning Quarterback, though it would be better if he'd cut back on the length and the repetitive features. I don't mind that he has certain hobbyhorses, especially when they're right (i.e., don't blitz on third and long), but it just makes pads the thing out way too much. I find myself scrolling through it, looking for the good tidbits.